I was taking a break from limit hold'em cash games this morning and played a $22 180 person sit and go. I moved in on someone with AKo and he folded after some thought, asking me what I had. I playfully told him 72 and that the kiddie game was down the street.

A few minutes later, he told me he was "watching me" and listed some of my finishes in these tournaments. As these $22 180 person tournaments are a true "sit and go," they don't show up on thepokerdb.com. Apparently tournamentreporter.com DOES track them. It seems pretty in-depth and even lists the player's placement by percentage in every tournament, etc. etc.

I realize that it's basically public information, but I don't like that I'd have to pay money to even the playing field against people that use this site. thepokerdb.com is heading the same direction with their ROI reports.

PokerStars is supposedly the only site taking steps to stop datamining in cash games, but I haven't heard of them doing anything with tournaments. Frankly, if they're going to force me to use the same name lifetime and make me a steady target for datamining, I expect them to protect my tournament results, too.

How do you guys feel about this?

I think utilizing a data mining service/program is a cost of doing business if youre going to play online. The sites are no more responsible for blocking that information than B&M casinos are for regulars who develop a "book" on opponents and share it with their friends/partners.

I didn't care for pokertrackers format and site coverage so I had my own data base developed. I wanted more data so I had a program written to capture hand histories in real time at multiple tables even if I'm not playing. There is no way for a site to block data mining (or bots for that matter, since the only obstacle to a bot is getting the hand informatoin in real time), they can only make it more expensive by changing screen formats regularly.

If you are a casual player the edge you pick up is minima and not worth what you spend on itl. Take notes...if you play at a regular time of day and site you'll know a good number of the players very quickly.

If youre a pro its worthwhile and its deductible.

I disagree about the "sharing the book between players" idea, but I don't know anything about how they're collecting this data, so I can't really argue the point. I'll have a conversation with my friend at PokerStars support about this.



That couldn't have been cheap...

The database to read text hand histories was very cheap...$150. The program to capture play in real time, not cheap lol.